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By Brendan O'BrienReuters • Saturday April 12, 2014 7:14 AM

DETROIT — A truck driver beaten unconscious by a mob when he tried to assist a child he had
accidentally struck with his pickup truck nine days ago has begun to regain consciousness and is
breathing on his own, his daughter said yesterday.

Steve Utash, 54, has been taken off a ventilator and is starting to speak, his daughter said in
a post on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website where more than $161,000 has been raised to help pay for
Utash’s medical bills.

“This is a long road ahead, but the end of the road will be worth it,” Manti Utash wrote
yesterday.

About a dozen bystanders attacked Utash on April 2 after he got out of his truck to check on a
10-year-old boy he hit accidentally after the child darted into the street, police said. The child,
David Harris, was treated for a leg injury and released from a hospital a day after the
incident.

Utash’s daughter said her father is delirious, affected by pain medication, but is able to
wiggle his toes on command and can answer yes-or-no questions. “He also keeps flashing back to the
assault, screaming ‘help’ and ‘please get them off me,’ ” she wrote.

Four people have been charged with assault with intent to murder and assault with intent to do
great bodily harm, said Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. A $500,000 cash bond was set for
each.

Prosecutors also charged a 16-year-old as a juvenile with assault with intent to do great bodily
harm and ethnic intimidation, a hate crime. The defendants are black; Utash is white.